


These are the practice oaths

by lowriseflare, threeguesses



Series: The box of multiple universes [1]
Category: Pitch (TV 2016)
Genre: Baseball features surprisingly heavily for us, Did we mention his wife had an affair?, F/M, First Time, Love Confessions, MIKE LAWSON WALKING HUMAN DISASTER
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-30
Updated: 2016-10-30
Packaged: 2018-08-27 21:43:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8417950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lowriseflare/pseuds/lowriseflare, https://archiveofourown.org/users/threeguesses/pseuds/threeguesses
Summary: In the wildcard game against the Mets, Ginny pitches maybe the most beautiful game of baseball Mike’s ever seen.





	

**Author's Note:**

> No, YOU wrote 10,000 words that essentially boil down to "pitcher/catcher celebrations, plus Mike is in love with her." Title is Bob Hicok, _A little mustard, side of pickle_.

In the wildcard game against the Mets, Ginny pitches maybe the most beautiful game of baseball Mike’s ever seen.

She’s pure magic, smoke and mirrors and a screwball, sending hitters chasing after pitches hooked just outside the strike zone and catching them looking as her slider dips across the plate. After seven scoreless innings, she hasn’t given up a single hit. In the eighth she has a bad run of pitches and lets the Mets load the bases with two outs, two walks, and a single, but it doesn’t matter because Shrek pulls down a pop up fly and suddenly they’re at the top of the ninth and Mike’s hitting a three-run homer. He can hear Ginny screaming and screaming at him as he rounds the bases, and then his feet are crossing home plate, and presto, Padres up by three, like a pulling a rabbit out of your hat.

When Al sends her out to the mound to close, Mike isn’t even nervous. They might as well have already won.

Two outs, Asdrúbal Cabrera at bat, and Mike’s calling for a change-up but Ginny shakes him off. Mike knows she wants to throw the screwball. He knows Cabrera probably knows it too, but he doesn’t care, because Ginny Baker at the top of her pitching game is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. They’re going to win, they’re going to the Division Series, and in this moment Mike will give her whatever the fuck she wants.

He calls for the screwball. Ginny throws.

It lands in his mitt.

In the split-second before the stadium erupts, Mike can see the look on her face: surprise, then quiet pleasure, like a toddler who stood up by accident.

He drops his mask and rushes the mound.

He has just enough time to worry about it, since he’s never actually celebrated with Ginny before and it occurs to him that she might feel the same way about it as she does the ass-slapping, but then he’s there and Ginny’s just _launching_ herself at him, whole body, her legs coming right up around his waist. “What’s that you’re always saying about waving you off?” she’s shouting, and Mike is hoisting her into the air, knees be damned, pressing his mouth against her ear, and saying, “Holy _shit_ , Gin, I love you.”

She whips her face around and stares at him, wide-eyed. Mike stares back.

He's never told her that before, obviously. He's never even _thought_ it, not once in all the time since she got called up: not in July, when she found out about about him and Amelia, then walked calmly out onto the ballfield and homered against Cincinnati. Not in August, when her pictures showed up on Barstool and he hid her at his place for two nights. And not in September, when she passed out on his shoulder on the flight back from Colorado and he spent the better part of an hour holding perfectly still even though his back was fucking screaming at him, never stopping once to ask himself why.

It's October now. He’s her captain. He’s thirty-seven years old. He’s _been_ in love before.

Which is how he knows, as soon as he says it, that it's true.

“Baker,” he starts, but before he can come up with some kind of plausible excuse—adrenaline, insanity—the rest of the team is piling on top of them, all bear hugs and flying ballcaps and whoops of pure, delighted joy.

Mike fully intends to say something to her about it. Playoffs or no playoffs, you can’t just let a thing like that lie. But then Blip’s tackling him, and Evelyn’s leaping down from the stands, and Al’s taking Mike’s face between two hands and promising him a ring before he retires, and he loses track of her in the shuffle. When he finds her again in the clubhouse it’s nearly thirty minutes later, champagne and and beer and bodies filling the locker room, but somehow Ginny spots him through the throng and _grins_.

“Lawson,” she whoops, and before Mike knows what’s happening she’s leaping into his arms again, like it’s nothing, like they’re teammates. She has goggles on and champagne in her hair, golden and breathless and untouchable, and dear _God_ , Mike loves her so fucking much. “If I hadn't messed up that one pitch,” she says, quiet enough that only he can hear, “it would have been a no-hitter.”

“Next time it will be,” Mike says without hesitation, hoisting her up to stand on a bench so Stubbs can drench her in champagne, and just like that he knows he’ll never say a word about it again. He refuses to ruin tonight for her, or make it about anything other than what it’s about: her first clubhouse celebration, her first division series, her first shutout. If Baker doesn’t care, he doesn’t care. Mike’s pretty sure every man in this locker room is in love with her tonight anyway, her mile-wide grin, her hoots of joy whenever anyone picks her up. She’s living history, and for the first time all season, the Padres want to reach out and touch it.

In the morning, Mike wakes up and finds himself on the cover of every newspaper in America.

“It’s a nice picture,” Al says, when Mike shows up to the clubhouse for BP. It’s the same thing Mike’s driver said, and the barista at Starbucks, and Frankie the Petco catering guy when Mike saw him in the parking lot. It _is_ a nice picture, objectively: velvet sky and a million flashbulbs exploding in the background, the field all around them so lush and green it seems to glow.

None of which manages to distract from the fact that Ginny’s arms are locked around his neck like he’s just back from Afghanistan, neither one of them is smiling, and Mike is looking at her like she holds his beating heart inside her glove.

“Hey, Mike,” Oscar says cheerily, all but skipping down the hallway clicking the heels of his Italian loafers. “Great picture!”

Hills is less tactful: “Sweet engagement photos, Lawson,” he calls across the locker room to assorted snorts and giggles. Mike flips the bird without bothering to look up. A gossip site once published a tree map of all the female celebrities he’d allegedly given chlamydia to, he reminds himself. This is nothing.

Still, he wants to at least make a joke about it with Ginny, _does that pitcher I’m wearing make my ass look fat_ , but she’s just barely on time for their presser and all Mike manages is a quick nod hello. Ginny nods back, widening her eyes at him like, _can you believe this?_ Mike cracks his knuckles and gets ready to talk about the headline the newspapers have all been running, Ginny Baker making history yet again, first woman in an MLB playoff. He’s planning to play up how humbled he is.

The very first question out of the gate, the Fox Sports correspondent asks Ginny if she and Mike are an item.

Ginny blanches. “What?” she says, half-laughing as she darts a glance at Mike. “Are you serious? Next question.”

There’s a brief, horrible silence, nothing but the sound of clicking cameras and Mike’s own thunderous breathing in his ears. Ginny’s jaw clenches. “I said, next _question_.”

Amelia shuts the conference down less than five minutes later, all smiles and cool blonde professionalism, telling the press they need to focus on their game against the Cubs tomorrow. Mike has never been more thankful for her in his life, including the time she pulled him aside three days after the disaster at the Nike thing and said, “Okay, this has been fun, but it’s time to call it.”

As soon as they’re safely back inside the clubhouse, Mike wants to talk to Ginny—to apologize, to take her frustrated face in his hands and tell her she’s a gamer no matter what anyone says—but Amelia beats him to it, grabbing Ginny’s arm and leading her away down the hallway. “Don’t say anything to anyone,” she hisses at Mike as they pass. “Let me handle this.” From her face, you’d think Mike had taken his dick out and rubbed it all over the microphones. He tries to catch Ginny’s eye, but her headphones are jammed over her ears and she’s staring at the wall.

“ _Great_ picture,” Buck says as he walks by. Mike bites down so hard on his tongue he tastes blood.

By the time batting practice rolls around it’s splashed across every channel, half the commentators speculating about him and Ginny’s relationship and the other half chastising the rest for speculating, like an ouroboros eating its own tail. It’s not so much the picture itself as it is the fact that they are so _many_ pictures of the two of them, leaving clubs together and goofing around on getaway day, that charity video they did for Boys  & Girls Club of America where they were both sitting on Blip’s bed. The rest of the team is always right outside the frame, of course, but it doesn't matter because you can't see them. Somehow, in the midst of Mike’s steadfast commitment to keeping his relationship with Ginny Baker on the up and up, he’d forgotten to pay any attention to how it _looked_.

“Baker's dated fellow ballplayers before, obviously,” he hears Mark Sweeney say as he's pulling on his kit, and fuck, here comes the whole Trevor Davis thing again too. The photos are already on screen when he looks up, censored-for-television versions of Ginny’s selfies plastered behind the anchors’ fat, pasty heads. Mike tapes his knees tight enough to cut the blood flow, then has to peel it all off and start again.

“Enough,” Al finally says, clicking off the TVs in the locker room and jerking his head toward the door. “Last I checked, we had a damn Division Series starting, so why don’t you girls stop sitting around watching soaps and get your asses outside with Baker?”

Sure enough, when Mike jogs out to the field Ginny’s already there, throwing to the pitching coach with the set of her jaw sharp and stubborn underneath her ballcap. “Baker,” Mike calls immediately, ignoring the snickers from some of the other rookies. “C’mere for a sec.”

Ginny looks at him like he just offered to sell her some meth. “No-ope,” she says, planting her hands on her hips and staying exactly where she is. “That’s okay.”

Mike rubs a hand over his beard and debates for a second. Walks over to her himself. “Baker—”

“I’m not talking about this, Lawson,” Ginny interrupts, catching the ball as it’s thrown back to her. “I’m not talking about it with some third-rate cable reporter and I’m not talking about it with Amelia and I am for _damn_ sure not talking about it with you.”

Mike frowns. “First of all, I’m your captain, so if I say we’re talking about something then we’re talking about it,” he hears himself say, then immediately feels like a giant gaping asshole. Fuck, that’s not how he wanted to handle this at all. He huffs a breath out, glancing around the field. “Baker,” he says quietly. “Come on.”

“Can this be done now?” she asks, and for a second she looks older than he’s ever, ever seen her. “Please? Can I just practice with everyone else?”

Mike thinks of the very first day he ever met her. He thinks of how unequivocally happy she was in the locker room last night. He thinks of the fact that nobody has ever, in sixteen years of pressers, asked him about his dating life, and finally he spits in the dirt and shrugs. “Okay,” he says. “Yeah. Forget it. Go warm up.”

“Already warm,” Ginny murmurs, then turns around and walks away.

 

 

They lose their first game against Chicago.

Mike spends the whole time trying not to feel any special type of way about the sight of Ginny up on the mound—Ginny fussing with her chalk bag, Ginny adjusting her ballcap, Ginny rolling the ball around and around in her hand. He wonders if this counts as a mid-life crisis, falling in love with a rookie pitcher a few months after finalizing his divorce. When she gives up a solo home run at the top of the third, Mike’s entire heart jerks like it’s being pulled out of his chest.

She telegraphs her next pitch, the whole set of her body shouting _heads up, fastball_. There’s a crack, and Javier Baez line drives it up the middle it for a single. Mike calls time and strides out to the mound.

“You’re okay,” he says when he gets there. “You’ve got this.” It’s the only thing he can think of. He has no speech for this, Ginny Baker staring down the great spinning wheel of American sexism. When the Trevor Davis pictures leaked, some assholes in Pittsburgh got them blown up poster-size and held them up in the stands.

Ginny nods. “I’m okay.”

And she is. She holds the Cubs to the one run until Al pulls her out after the seventh, but in the end one turns out to be enough: 1-0 Cubs, 1-0 for the series.

Back in the locker room, Mike finds out the story’s got legs. The morning shows want him. John Oliver wants him. Kimmel wants him, although apparently only because Ginny said no. Mike calls his agent, a quiet guy around Al’s age he’s been with since he first got called up, and gives him Amelia Slater’s contact information, telling him to coordinate any and all decisions with her.

He gets a call back five minutes later saying there’s nothing to coordinate. Baker isn't doing any shows or releasing any statements.

“They’re _teammates_ ,” Frank Thomas is saying on the clubhouse tv. “They're celebrating, for God’s sake. Mike Lawson has flat-out kissed his pitchers on the mouth before.” Pete Rose says, “None of Mike Lawson’s other pitchers look like that.”

Mike hangs up the phone and goes looking for Amelia.

“Why aren't you issuing a statement?” he blurts when he finds her in the clubhouse bar. She's drinking a glass of wine and working on her laptop, just like she was the night they first slept together. The déjà vu sits heavy in Mike's stomach.

Amelia looks at him over the tops of her reading glasses for a moment, cool and assessing. Back when they were dating they used to talk about Ginny all the time, her game performance and her press and sometimes, shamefully, her mental health, how she was shoring up under all the pressure. They never put a name to why neither of them wanted to tell her they were sleeping together. The closest they ever came was that very first morning, Amelia buttoning up her shirt and saying _she still carries your rookie card and had your poster on her bedroom wall_.

Amelia looks like she might say something about it now, finally call the play after all these many months, but instead she shrugs. “Ginny doesn't want to.”

Mike stands there for a long moment, staring at her. He thinks about the Nike dinner, the first time he let himself touch the words _Ginny Baker_ and _crush_ together in his mind. He thinks about what kind of asshole he would be if he takes advantage of a twenty-three-year-old girl’s infatuation to fill the hole left by his divorce.

“Okay,” he tells Amelia. "Thanks." Then he turns around and goes home.

 

 

He finds Ginny in the gym before sunrise the next morning, headphones on and dark eyes narrowed, running like she thinks she’s being chased. She’s been here a _while_ , clearly: there’s sweat slicked along her collarbones and in the creases of her elbows, a narrow strip of smooth brown skin visible where her tank top is rucking up. Mike, who has spent the last four months assiduously not noticing anything about Ginny Baker’s body beyond what it can do for this ball club, is very careful to keep his eyes on her face.

“Talk for a second?” he asks, planting himself in front of her treadmill. Ginny motions to her headphones like, _sorry_ , _can’t hear you._ Mike rolls his eyes, then reaches over the top of the machine and hits _end program_.

Ginny scowls at him but she takes her headphones off, slowing to a jog and then a walk. “That was rude,” she pants finally, reaching for a towel off the rack.

“Yeah, well, I’m rude.” Mike shrugs and gets her a cup of water, glancing away as she wipes herself off. “You should issue a statement.”

Ginny snorts, dropping down onto the mats and butterflying her legs out. “No.”

Mike ignores her. “Have Amelia do a blanket denial and then it’ll be over. You can go back to playing baseball like you want.”

“A blanket denial of _what_ , exactly?” Ginny snaps, but before he can say anything she continues. “You really think it’ll be done after that? Because here’s what I think is going to happen, Lawson. I think as soon as I acknowledge this stupid, nosy, _irrelevant_ question, it’s open season on me for every other stupid, nosy, irrelevant question for the rest of my damn career.”

Mike jams his hands in the pockets of his sweatpants. It’s not like she doesn’t have a point. Still, “We can’t control what they might or might not ask you ten years from now,” he argues. “We can control how we handle this one situation.”

“Can we?” Ginny fires back immediately, and something about the way she says it stops Mike’s heart inside his chest.

“What?” he asks after a long beat. He thinks of the Nike event again. Suddenly he can't stop looking at the way her legs are spread on the mat.

Ginny must notice, because she closes them. “Nothing. Look, it's a nice picture, okay? Let’s just let it go.”

Easy for her to say, Mike thinks. She isn’t the one being moved to sloppy declarations of love on the cover of _Time_. “They’re dragging up the Davis thing again,” he points out, then immediately regrets it. He thinks of the picture they always show, Ginny grinning in a mirror selfie, and feels the hot pinch of something that might be shame, but could also be lust.

Ginny shrugs and folds her body over to touch her toes, her ponytail flopping forward to expose her damp neck. She stretches like a boy, all business, none of the elegant grace Rachel used to have when she was doing yoga. Mike has no idea why that's suddenly a thing that’s as precious to him as his own two hands. “So what? Everybody’s seen those by now.”

Mike swallows hard. “Well then _I’m_ going to deny it, Ginny,” he says, and he doesn’t necessarily think he meant to talk so loud.

It's a mistake, using her given name. He’s only ever used it the one other time.

Ginny comes out of her stretch to stare at him. “Why?” she says. “You worried about your reputation?” She lets her legs fall open again, the smooth triangle of fabric at the juncture stretched tight. It finally, _finally_ occurs to Mike, through the fog of horrible lust, that she’s doing it on purpose.

For one impossible second, he truly can't breathe. Then he forces himself to laugh. “We both know I’m hotter than you, rookie.”

Ginny doesn’t smile. “Oh,” she says slowly, getting to her feet in one smooth, fluid, ass-first movement—and fuck, Mike lied, she’s the most graceful thing he’s ever seen. “Is _that_ what we know?” Then, before he can say anything, before he can suck one mouthful of air into his pathetic lungs, she shakes her head. “Look, I’m straight up asking you, Lawson. Please don't dignify the question. I’ll see you out there.”

Then she turns around and walks out of the gym.

Mike stands there for a minute, trying to figure out what just happened here. Trying to figure out what’s _happening_. He doesn’t know if he wants to fuck her raw or cook her dinner or get down on his knees and worship her. He thinks it’s possible he wants all three. He feels like a dumb fucking animal. If this is a midlife crisis then it’s a horrible one, it feels exactly like the real thing. He needs to get himself under control.

He gets on the treadmill and runs four miles. He gets into the shower and rubs one out.

Then he goes upstairs, puts on his uniform, and gets his ass handed to him by the Chicago Cubs for the second day in a row.

This time, Mike knows exactly how he’s feeling as he watches Ginny Baker on the mound. It’s lust, plain and blunt and stupid as he’s ever felt it. He spent so long not thinking anything in particular about her body that now it feels like he’s thinking everything at once, noticing her neck and her waist and her ass in her Padres uniform, God, her ass when she goes into her wind up, her ass when she does anything at all. It’s the second game of the fucking _Division Series_ , and here’s Mike imagining laying his rookie pitcher out on a bed and burying his face between her thighs. When he walks out to the mound with Al at the top of the sixth to talk pitch count, he’s almost forgotten they're in a fucking playoff at all.

“I can go one more,” Ginny says. Mike opens his mouth to agree with her because she’s beautiful and he just wants to give her things. He wants to win this game in general but also specifically _for_ her, like it’s a gift he can wrap up and give her the way other men might give jewelry. Fuck, this is so fucking inappropriate, projecting whatever the fuck this is onto the first woman in the MLB. Mike should probably see a therapist.

“You’ve pitched over a hundred,” Al says, and Christ, that’s right, she has. “We gotta rest your arm.”

Ginny comes out. Evers goes in. The final score is 4-0 Cubs, and _still_ all the ESPN camera crew wants to talk to Mike about afterwards is Ginny. “This is a distraction,” Al says as they walk down the tunnel, and Mike can't exactly tell him he’s wrong.

He changes out of his kit, feeling trapped and uneasy. “We gotta deny it,” he tells Ginny through the door of her closet-come-changing room. “Or at least explain why we're not taking the question.” When she doesn't answer he rubs a hand over his head and sighs. “Baker, this is insane.”

“What’s insane is that we’re still talking about it!” she shouts, voice muffled.

Mike glances around, trying not to picture her back there: the sharp jut of her elegant shoulder blades, her muscles moving under her skin. Some of the guys have taken off, but definitely not all of them. Blip has his head down, is packing up his gear with great concentration, but Stubbs and most of the others aren’t even pretending not to watch. “Baker—”

“Fuck off, Lawson! I’m getting dressed!”

Mike closes his eyes for a moment. Once, right at the very gasping end of their marriage, he and Rachel got into a screaming fight on a crowded street outside a hipster meatball shop in Little Italy. This feels like that, only worse.

“You really want to go to Chicago with this hanging around your neck?” he tries next, rubbing at his beard while he waits for an answer that doesn't come. Then, even though he knows it's a dick thing to say: “You really wanna go to Chicago with this hanging around _everybody’s_ neck?”

Well, that gets the reaction: Ginny wrenches the door open, leggings and sports bra and miles of toned, unblemished skin, but before Mike can react to that—fuck, before he can remind himself _not_ to react—she’s climbing up onto a bench with her hands on her hips.

“Hey!” she calls. “Do any of you idiots actually think that me and Lawson are secretly fucking?”

Nobody says anything. That isn’t surprising—she’s a force of nature right now, Mike would sooner stroll into the path of an oncoming funnel cloud—but Ginny isn’t satisfied. “Answer me,” she commands.

There's another second of silence; then: “No,” a couple of them call sheepishly. “Nah, of course not.”

“Well then,” Ginny says quietly, stepping down off the bench, “that’s all that matters.”

It should be—fuck, there's no reason for it not to be—but then she looks at him, just for a second, and Mike is not at all sure she isn’t about to cry.

“Baker,” he says quietly. He's watched her throw a lot of tantrums during her time with the Padres, over the beanball war and her mother’s new boyfriend and the Nike party and the Trevor Davis pictures, and each time he finds it strangely endearing and—he can admit this now—just the slightest bit erotic, how willing she is to cause a scene and gorgeously bratty she looks as she does it. It's different when she's about to cry. God, she is so fucking young, she is way too young for Mike to actually be in love with. He should just buy another sports car and call it quits.

“You’re good, Gin,” Stubbs says, glancing at Mike like he kicked a puppy. “Don't listen to him, the circus when he dated Jessica Alba was way worse.”

“Plus his fucking doping scandal,” Shrek adds. “We got hate mail.”

Ginny smiles, swiping roughly at her eyes, and even in the height of whatever the fuck this is Mike recognizes that it’s a good thing, the guys turning against him to back her up. He knows he should make a joke, something about Jessica Alba or the fact that the hate mail they got was really a bunch of letters from concerned church groups, break the tension, but Ginny's still standing there half-dressed and he just can’t. “Yeah,” he says instead. “They're right. Don't listen to me.”

“I’m not even the one making a dumb face in the picture,” Ginny grumbles as she stomps back into her dressing room, and it's _almost_ under her breath, except Shrek hears and cackles. Mike feels his ears flame.

“All right, well, I’ll see you mooks in the morning,” he says, swinging his pack over one shoulder and deciding to quit while he’s behind. “Let's see if we all can't find our own asses with two hands by the time we get to Wrigley, how about?”

It feels like the day has gone on forever but it's still not quite dark by the time he makes it back to La Jolla, the last dregs of half-assed October sunlight still visible behind the hills. Mike cooks himself a steak and a bag of frozen vegetables, turning the TV up loud enough that it's hard to concentrate on anything else. Back when he was married if he got in his head too much Rachel world always wind up distracting him out of it somehow, sex or cocktails or a trip to the beach to wait in the obscenely long line at a taco truck she liked. Mike doesn't know why he's thinking about Rachel so much today, except for the part where he kind of does.

He turns the TV off again, the silence oddly startling. He stares at the pool for a while. Finally he picks up his phone.

Ginny answers on the second ring. “If you’re calling to fight me some more, Lawson, you can just go ahead and—”

“I’m not,” he interrupts her. Then, tipping his head back against the top of his uncomfortable sofa: “Honestly, I’m not.”

There's a pause then. “Okay,” she says quietly. “Then what?”

Mike takes a deep breath. He told himself he was calling her to clear the air here, to say he's sorry and it's all his fault and they’ll ride it out however she wants to, but when he opens his mouth what comes out is, “I’m gonna come over, okay?”

Ginny doesn't answer for a moment. Mike closes his eyes and waits. There's a million reasons for her to call him off, and a million different ways for her to do it: it's late. They've got 6am car pickup. He's a lonely, broken-down dinosaur at the end of his career who has no business whatsoever—

“Make sure nobody sees you,” Ginny says.

Mike swallows. “Got it.”

 

 

Nobody sees.

There’s nobody _to_ see, the Petco and the Omni both emptied out and dark in an eerily final sort of way, like not even the vendors think they’ll make it to the NLCS. Mike rides the elevator up to Ginny's floor with his cap pulled low over his face anyway, feeling hulking and obvious. This late, the Omni looks depressing, dim lights and dingy carpets—Mike forgets, sometimes, what with the media circus and the history in the making, that Ginny Baker is still just a rookie call-up living out of a hotel room. When this blows over, he’s going to convince her it's time to buy some actual real estate.

Ginny answers his knock in what Mike guesses must be her pajamas, sweatpants and a ratty farm team hoodie. “I’m not sorry about what I said,” she announces as he steps inside. “So if that's what you're here for, you might as well leave.” Her face is like a stone wall.

Mike takes one look at her messy hair and slim brown ankles and feels a jolt of something deep and gnawing and fucking _serious._  God, this is ridiculous, he barely even knows her. He has no business wanting the things he wants, up to and including the sudden all-encompassing desire to take her home to North Carolina and look at her fucking baby pictures.

“It's not,” he says. “I swear.”

Ginny frowns harder. “Okay, well, what then?” she asks, crossing her arms. “Because if this is a booty call, I have to tell you, you are doing a weak-ass job.”

Mike nearly swallows his own tongue. “It's not that either,” he says, but as soon as the words are out of his mouth he catches her eye and dear God, of _course_ it is. He’s at a girl’s place at ten o’clock on a weekday, that’s exactly what’s happening. Mike doesn't know how he ever convinced himself otherwise.

Ginny rolls her shoulders back, considering him.

Then she strips off her hoodie.

“I just wanna know one thing first,” she says. She’s still wearing a tee-shirt on but no bra, Mike can see the outline of her nipples clear as day.

“What?” he asks dumbly. He has no idea what to do with his fucking hands.

Ginny chews on her lip. “Did you mean it?”

Mike doesn't bother pretending he isn't sure what she's talking about. “Baker,” he tries, then breaks off and scrubs a hand over his beard, embarrassed. It’s one thing to say it on the mound in a haze of happiness but another thing to say it here, in her sad hotel room with her glaring at him after a two game losing streak. There is exactly zero chance she’s going to say it back.

Ginny frowns. “It’s okay, I never actually thought you meant it for real. You don’t need to let me down gently or whatever. I just want to know.”

Mike opens his mouth. “Gin—”

“Lawson, it’s _fine_ ,” Ginny says, her chin jutting out like a teenage boy. “I just want you to cop to it, that’s all.”

Mike feels like he’s swallowed a mouthful of ash. “I can’t,” he says helplessly, then clears his throat and tries again. “Ginny, I can’t cop to anything, I meant it.” He stops. He knows he owes her an explanation: that he's having some kind of psychological episode and it isn't fair to her, that he doesn't expect her to fix his knees or his back or his ego, that he’ll leave right now if she wants and they never have to mention this again. But then he looks at her, at her mouth and her hair and her pissed-off expression, and explaining feels besides the point. “I meant it,” he repeats.

Ginny gazes at him for a long, quiet moment. Then she nods. “Come here.”

“Baker—”

“ _Lawson_.” She huffs out a breath. “I said come here.”

Mike comes. Ginny reaches up and plucks his cap off by the brim, setting it down on the table beside her. “No hats in the house,” she explains calmly, then puts both hands on his face and kisses him.

Mike freezes. Her mouth is warm and wide and she tugs at his bottom lip like a dare, her palms hot against his cheeks. As soon as he reaches a tentative hand towards her waist she makes a quiet sound, somewhere in the vicinity of a hum, and fuck, okay. Okay. Mike curls both hands around her waist and licks into her mouth, tasting Scope and toothpaste and not much else, like maybe she chugged the entire bottle. His dick is almost instantly hard.

“Ginny,” he says, but she's already shaking her head.

“Come here,” she repeats, and now she's pulling him over to the ugly beige couch and somehow Mike's sitting down on it, his knees creaking, and then just like that he has a lap full of Ginny Baker, her full weight coming down on top of him as she rocks her hips.

“Fuck,” Mike says, bucking up against her. Right away Ginny’s kisses turn sloppy, wide-open mouth and a lot of tongue like she's trying to inhale him, her arms wrapping all the way around his neck. Mike argues with himself for a full minute before giving in and cupping her ass. Ginny hums again in reply, then puts her face down against his shoulder and _bites_.

“Shit,” she says. Mike can barely hear her, but he can tell he’s turning her on. Jesus, he thinks he’s actually turning her on a _lot_ , if the way she's breathing is any indication. He rolls his hips up and squeezes her ass again, and this time she digs her nails in, pressing her hot face pressed into his neck as she gasps. The room is so silent Mike can hear the whoosh of fabric when they move.

“What do you want?” he asks desperately, because everything about her body right now is a demand. When he squeezes her ass again she gulps, grinding down into him hard and punishing, and finally he realizes she's not just turned on—she's _close_.

“Oh Jesus Ginny,” Mike says, shoving her away from him so he can work a hand down the front of her sweatpants. “Okay here, one second, one second.”

There's a fumble to get her underwear down around her thighs, but then his hand is on her and she's hugely, enormously wet. Mike swears and slides a finger inside with no preamble whatsoever, watching in disbelief as her hips jerk against his palm. “Ginny,” he whispers, and she bites him again instead of answering. Her face is still tucked down against his neck.

Fuck, she really is about to, Mike can tell from the grip of her cunt. “Look at me?” he asks, but Ginny shakes her head, breathing in big, desperate gulps against his shoulder, and then barely a second later she's coming, her whole body freezing in place as she bears down silently on his fingers. Mike cups the back of her curly head and hangs on.

He wants to do this again, he thinks even as it’s happening. Jesus Christ, he wants to do this until he _dies_.

Ginny stays exactly when she is for a long moment once she’s finished, face hidden in his shoulder and her strong arms locked around his neck. Mike rubs his free hand along her spine. He doesn’t know if she’s shy or embarrassed or what, exactly; he’d worry she was already regretting this, but every few seconds her short nails scrape through the hair at the base of his skull, not especially gently. Mike’s dick jumps every time.

“You done with me now, Baker?” he murmurs finally, bouncing her gently to get her attention. He likes her in his lap, warm weight and the sweat-shampoo smell of her hair, but his legs are starting to fall asleep underneath her and he’s still got his middle finger buried to the second knuckle in her cunt. “You want me to see myself out here, hit the road?”

That gets a quiet snort out of her. She sits back on his thighs and looks at him, hair a messy halo of curls. “Asshole,” she says quietly—but not, Mike thinks, without affection. “Maybe.”

She’s shifted her hips enough that he can pull his hand free and he slides his middle finger into his mouth before he knows he’s going to do it, sucking off her taste with a wet pop. Ginny’s eyebrows flicker. She tastes salty and warm and a little bit chemical, like maybe she washed up before he came over. He wants her all over himself like he wants to breathe.

“You okay?” he asks. “You like that?” When Ginny nods he slips his hands underneath her t-shirt and curls them around her waist, squeezing. “You gotta talk to me a bit here, Baker.”

“I’m talking,” she protests, pushing her hair behind her ears and smirking at him. “I just called you an asshole, didn’t I?”

Mike smiles. “You did.” She’s holding her face close enough to kiss so he steals one, bumping his mouth against hers gently. “What do you want?” He’s not necessarily crazy about the way his voice sounds when he asks the question. The last time he slept with a woman he was in love with he was married to her.

Ginny shrugs. “World peace. To win the series.” She reaches down to pull her sweatpants back into place. “For you to come to bed.”

The last is so quiet Mike almost misses it. “Yeah?” he asks stupidly. “You sure?”

Ginny nods. “Yeah.”

 

 

Her bedroom is unquestionably a hotel bedroom, complete with a hideous coverlet and matching bedside tables, the lamps throwing out that aggressively-yellow hotel lighting Mike guesses is supposed to remind everyone of pre-environmentally-friendly days. There's an open suitcase on the floor where she started packing for Chicago, underwear and compression gear strewn across the bed. “Gonna be ready for the flight?” Mike asks.

“Yep,” Ginny says, shoving everything onto the floor in a gratifyingly urgent sort of way. “Fast packer.” Then she pulls off her shirt.

Mike stares. “Come _here_ ,” he says helplessly.

Ginny steps up into his space, wrinkling her nose. “Better or worse than Jessica Alba?”

“Better,” Mike says, cupping her impatiently. She's gorgeous, full and round with long brown nipples that make him want to suck. Then he realizes what she said. “Wait. Are you jealous of Jessica Alba, rookie?”

He’s teasing, but Ginny just stares back at him steadily. “No. Unless—”

Mike can hear the rest of the sentence as clear as if she’d spoken it, _unless you're also in love with Jessica Alba_. “Uh, nope,” he tells her, sliding both hands around her waist and bending down to rub his beard over her skin. “Nothing against her personally, we just never really clicked, you know?”

Ginny hums, her hands come up to scritch through his hair. After a moment she redirects his mouth to a nipple, more or less feeding it to him, and okay. “Bed,” Mike tells her, feeling breathless. Then, because he can't leave well enough alone, “It’s not a move, you know. I have literally said it to three women in my entire life.”

Ginny bites her lip. “Let’s lie down,” she says, and Mike swallows hard against the words bubbling up in his throat. He wants to tell her that he means it, wants to pull out the hotel Bible that’s probably collecting dust somewhere in the dresser drawer and swear. If he were her, he wouldn’t believe himself either.

“C’mere,” he says instead, crowding her back onto the mattress and boosting her up onto the pillows. He bites his way down her ribcage, scraping his beard over the soft, delicate skin of her stomach until she whines. He wants to cater to her every way he knows how. But when he slides his hand under the waistband of her sweats he finds himself hesitating, not sure what to do first. He wants her to sit on his face until he suffocates. He wants to turn her over and eat her out from behind. He wants so much at once and in all directions that he can’t actually make a decision about it for a second, and while he’s going back and forth like an idiot Ginny rolls them over, shoving his shoulders back onto the bed.

“You hanging in, old man?” she asks, swinging one leg over to straddle him and leaning forward so her tits are right in his face. Her voice is just the slightest bit wooden. “You need a break or anything, you just let me know.”

Mike swallows. “I’ll keep you posted,” he promises, popping up on his elbows to chase her, his teeth just catching the underside of one soft breast. Ginny hums. After a minute she reaches down and strips off his t-shirt, her stare openly assessing. Mike lets her look. He understands the impulse: he wants to study her like game tape until he’s the world’s greatest living expert. He wants Ken Burns to interview him for a ten part documentary about her smile.

Still: “You got a plan here, rook?” he asks finally, taking her by the hands and pulling her down on top of him so their chests are pressed together. Jesus Christ, she is so fucking warm.

Ginny smiles for real. “Always,” she says, then flips them again. “Move.” She pushes him off her, reaching down and wriggling right out of her sweats.

Mike laughs, surprised and bested. He’s never actually had sex with another athlete before. “Cute,” he tells her, and Ginny smirks.

“I have my moments.”

Mike kisses her smile then gets his knees underneath him, leaning down to puts his mouth on her breasts. “What do you like?” he asks, not so much after the guidance as wanting her to talk to him. “This?” He closes his lips around her nipple and sucks gently. “Or this?” He sucks harder, giving her just the slightest edge of teeth.

“Both,” Ginny gasps unhelpfully, and Mike grins.

“Both is good,” he tells her, then alternates between the two until she's arching underneath him, grinding herself against his thigh with zero apparent concern for the state of his jeans. Mike is going to be able to smell her all over himself when he leaves. “Can I go down on you?” he asks when he finally comes up for air, and he doesn't mean to sound so eager.

Ginny raises her eyebrows. “Uh, yep,” she says, sliding her hands underneath the pillow. “Sure can.” He thinks she's blushing a little, but he can't be sure.

“Affirmative consent, Baker,” he tells her, then watches with interest as she piles three fluffy hotel pillows under her head before handing one down to him.

“For your knees or whatever,” she explains. When Mike keeps staring she looks away, dark eyelashes heavy on her cheeks. “I wanna watch. That okay?” Her voice is quiet and serious.

“You can do whatever you want,” Mike promises immediately, and means it.

He goes easy at first, opening her up with both thumbs and licking gently, trying to get a feel for what she likes. Ginny's hips shift anxiously against the bed. She’s watching the whole proceedings, curious, one hand up behind her head and the other one worrying the corner of her lip so aggressively Mike thinks it's possible she’s aiming to pull it clean off.

“Relax, rook,” he murmurs after a moment, glancing up and biting gently at her lower belly. “I gotcha.”

Ginny huffs. “I am relaxed,” she insists, but the muscles in her thighs and calves tell a different story, tense as a runner about to steal home. “Do you like doing that?” she asks after a second, sounding vaguely accusatory.

Mike looks up at her. He does, actually, and he’s had a good amount of practice, but he doesn’t really think that’s the information she’s after. He rests his head against the inside of her thigh, thinks again how young she is. Tries to stop thinking about it. “I like doing it to you,” he tells her honestly. Ginny rolls her eyes.

“Now _that_ is a move,” she says, but she doesn’t exactly sound mad about it. Mike smirks and ducks his face back down, gives her a couple of fingers for her trouble. Ginny’s knees thunk open against the bed.

“You were saying?” he teases gently as she whimpers.

“Shut up,” Ginny mutters at the ceiling. Then, so quietly he almost doesn’t even hear her: “Please don’t stop.”

Fuck, Mike is never stopping. He is never, _ever_ stopping. “Not gonna,” he tells her, reaching up to spread his palm over her lower belly. He means to give her something to anchor against but instead Ginny grabs for his fingers and holds on, her hand sweaty and hot in his. Mike’s heart does something complex and painful inside his chest.

She takes longer to come this time, all quiet gasps and wiggling, her heels kicking softly against the mattress. She’s so completely silent Mike almost can't tell whether she’s enjoying herself. But only almost, because when he pauses after five minutes he realizes that somewhere between now and her first orgasm she's gone and gotten herself unbelievably wet for him, soaking his hand and his beard and her own brown thighs, lovely and revealing. Mike swears and gives her another finger, laughing as she gasps and tries to close her legs around him.

“Stop it, rookie. You’re gonna get beard burn.” He’s pretty sure he’s starting to rub her raw already. She’s shaved down here and he’s not exactly playing nice. “Not gonna be such a party when you can feel it under your uniform tomorrow,” he warns when she tries to close them again, blocking her with a shoulder.

“Oh _, shit_ ,” Ginny hisses, and for half a second he thinks it was a mistake to mention it but then just like that she's coming like gangbusters all over his face and fingers, her nails digging into his palm. Mike almost loses it himself. He doesn't think it was the idea of it alone that got the job done for her, exactly. But it also definitely didn't hurt.

“Okay,” Ginny gasps as soon as she's finished, yanking him up by his shoulders, clutching at him with all four limbs. “Okay, shit, come up here.”

Mike grins. He wants to tease her a little, ask her more about being out on the pitch with her thighs all scraped and stinging, but _come up here_ is actually the most words she's strung together in a while and he figures he should reward her. He crawl up the bed, bracing his palms on either side of her mountain of pillows. He means to kiss her—he _wants_ to kiss her, badly—but she's already shoving him onto his back and yanking at his jeans, pushing them down over his hips like they've offended her. She works his boxers down too, then wraps her hand around his dick and jacks once. Mike groans out loud.

“ _Baker_.”

“What?” She pushes her hair out of her face, sounding almost annoyed. “Do you not want me to?”

Jesus Christ, of course he fucking wants her to. But when he was picturing doing this with her—and he did, he pictured it basically nonstop the last few days, in the shower and at practice and at night before he fell asleep, like some kind of fucked up water main break in his brain—he somehow forgot to picture her actually doing anything to _him_. His head needs a second to catch up.

“Yeah,” he says, reaching down and running a shaky hand over her curls. “I—yeah.”

Ginny jacks him again, slow and tight, and fuck, she's using her right hand, her pitching hand, that hand is literally worth millions of dollars. “Yeah as in you want me to, or yeah as in you don't?” she asks. When he stares at her, she winks. “Affirmative consent.”

“Fuck,” Mike says, laughing in surprise. She may not be talking a lot but when she does her voice is gorgeous, lower and even hoarser than usual. It sounds like she's been screaming in the back of her throat. “Yeah as in I want you to,” he admits, threading his fingers carefully through her hair so he’s cupping her scalp. Then he realizes it looks like he's planning to hold her and starts to pull them back out.

“You’re fine,” Ginny says, letting her head loll back into his touch. Then she ducks her chin and opens her mouth.

Mike forces himself to take a breath. He used to pet Rachel’s hair when she did this too, fuss with it and run it through his fingers, wrap it around his fist and pile it on top of her head; Rach would tease him and say he liked it better than the actual blow job. When he scritches a little with his nails Ginny hums quietly, closing her eyes in apparent contentment, and he groans before he can stop himself.

Ginny’s eyes pop open. She slides her mouth down his cock, humming deliberately, and fuck, it shouldn't be as hot as it really, really is.

Mike lets her go a couple of minutes longer—almost too long, actually, so that when he pulls her off he has to pause for a minute, clamping a hand around the base of his dick and taking a deep breath. Ginny stretches out on the mattress beside him, eyeing him with open amusement.

“Last time I checked you came twice already, princess,” he grumbles finally, hauling her back up on top of him and kissing her lush, swollen mouth. He slides a hand down over her ass, squeezing hard enough that she whines. “You got a condom?”

Ginny raises her eyebrows. “Don’t _you_?”

Mike looks at her in surprise. “I—”

“Who comes over for a booty call without a condom?” she interrupts.

“Jesus Christ, I have a condom,” Mike says, oddly flustered. Then he fists his hand in her hair again and tugs gently until looks him in the eyes. “Baker. Hey. This isn't a booty call.”

He braces himself for some smartass comment, _bet that’s what you told Jessica Alba too,_ but instead she only gazes at him for a moment, an expression on her face he can't quite read. Then she shoves him toward the end of the bed where his jeans are, smacking him hard on his ass as he goes. “Get it.”

Mike gets it.

As soon as it's on Ginny is climbing back into his lap, fawnlike, her arms and legs just slightly wobbly. “Gonna make me come a third time?” she asks quietly, looking down as she aligns their hips.

Mike—really can't believe she’s dirty talking him, honestly. “Yes,” he says, after exactly one beat too long. Ginny peeks up at him, dimpling.

“What?” she asks, reaching down and lining him up. “I know the words.”

“ _What_ words?” Mike asks, embarrassingly eager. Ginny laughs.

“Let's see if I can't make you say some instead,” she says, and then Mike’s dick is bumping right up against her opening and she's sinking down onto him and she's _so_ fucking warm, even through the condom. He bites off a groan.

“You're noisy,” Ginny observes, and Christ, Mike is going to be lucky if he doesn't come three seconds into this. He curls his hands around her hips as she gets herself settled, barely resisting the urge to paw her everywhere at once. He's still not sure this is ever going to happen again, and if it doesn't he wants to remember exactly how she looks right now: brow sweetly furrowed in concentration and dark hair everywhere, a flash of wet pink tongue at the corner of her mouth. She's shifting around on top of him, a hundred tiny infinitesimal movements. Mike holds very, very still.

“Good?” he asks her finally, and Ginny nods, but just as she does she sits all the way back on him and _gasps_ , mouth dropping open in pleasure and wide eyes locking on his.

Mike, who did exactly nothing, has never felt so brilliant in bed in his entire life. “ _Fuck_ , Ginny, do that again.”

“Yeah, I’m—” She wriggles around for another second, gasps again. “ _Shit_.”

“That's it.” Mike reaches up and between rolls her nipples between his fingers, pulling gently until she lets out a quiet whine, then pulling harder. He wants her to be noisy, too. “Jesus Christ, do you know how beautiful you are?”

Ginny makes a face at him even as she's moving. Mike yanks at her nipples again, thrusting up for the first time.

“Ginny,” he says, laughing a little, “take the compliment.” He means to tell her some more stuff about herself, about her eyes and her mouth and her dimple, but suddenly she’s gasping again, literally gulping for air, and holy shit Mike is pretty sure she’s about to come. “ _Ginny_ ,” he repeats, not laughing at all.

“Mike,” she pants, and God, Mike is never going to forget how she looks now, fucking herself down onto his dick over and over and _over_ , her mouth dropping open and her back arching. “Move.” She reaches behind herself to yank at his leg, trying to force him to thrust up into her.

Mike shakes his head because all of a sudden he’s close too, so close he can _taste_ it, and if he moves even an inch he’s going to come. “Can’t,” he tells her.

“Mike,” Ginny groans, “ _please_ move.”

Fuck. Mike moves, fucking up into her hard and deep, hands on her ass to hold her in place. Ginny whines, dropping down to clutch at his shoulders, and then suddenly they’re both coming after four sloppy, rhythmless thrusts, Ginny whimpering right in his face and Mike gasping her name. It’s the worst, most significant sex of his entire adult life.

“ _Fuck_ , Ginny,” he says when they’re finished, huffing a disbelieving laugh into her hair. _We’ll work on that last play next time,_ he wants to tell her, only then he doesn't want to assume anything. He feels shaky and overwhelmed.

She lets him hold her for a bit in the half-dark of her hotel bedroom, the warm wrung-out weight of her on top of him and her rough fingers threaded through his. Mike’s head spins. He wants to win her the Series and take her on vacation and tell her he loves her until he's sure she believes him. Most of all, he doesn't want her to move. Finally, when they're about to lose the condom altogether, he nudges her with his chin. “Roll over a sec?” he murmurs into her temple. “Let me get rid of this.”

He thinks it's probably a mistake even as he's doing it, and he's right; by the time he gets back from the bathroom she’s pulled her sweats back on and is tossing clothes from the flimsy-looking bureau into her suitcase, his own jeans and t-shirt deposited pointedly on the bed. “It’s late,” she announces, not quite looking at him.

Mike feels something heavy drop in the pit of his stomach, like swallowing a marble. “Yeah,” he says, clearing his throat a little. “You're probably right.”

Ginny walks him to the door, which is more than he expects. Kissing her goodbye feels presumptuous but not kissing her feels unbearable, so Mike settles for the corner of her mouth, where her dimple would be if she were smiling.

“See you at the airport,” he tells her. Ginny nods.

 

 

She barely says two words to him for the next forty-eight hours.

They land in O’Hare at noon local time and pile into the buses to the hotel, bleary from lack of sleep and re-circulated plane air. Mike tells the guys to take a nap and eat a good dinner before turning in early then pointedly doesn’t take his own advice, skulking around the workout room in the hopes that Ginny will stop by, feeling nervous and ill.

She doesn’t.

Mike doesn’t see her at all until batting practice the next day at Wrigley, when she strolls out onto the field and goes right into her stretching routine without so much as a hello, even though she’s chosen to stand less than a foot away from him. Mike rubs a hand through his beard, considering her.

“Hey, Baker,” he says finally, and his voice sounds mostly normal. “We good?”

Ginny lifts her chin at him. “We good.” After a minute she lays a hand on his arm for balance as she pulls her cleat back into a stretch. Mike stops breathing entirely.

On the bench, she asks for a stick of his gum.

At the bottom of the first, she strikes out the first three guys. At the bottom of the fourth, she’s still hitless. At the top of fifth she gets on base and Mike has the pleasure of sending her home with a triple to deep right, watching her whooping celebration from third base. When he jogs across the plate himself off of Shrek’s single, she hoots at him, holding up both hands for a high five and all of a sudden Mike realizes that this is the _Division Series_ and they’re up 2-0.

“Don't jinx it, Baker,” he says, tapping the brim of her cap as he heads into the dugout. She just grins at him, dimple popping.

She's hitless in the fifth, then again in the sixth. Al keeps her in the batting order for the seventh and nobody mentions why, but all the other guys have stopped sitting anywhere near her in the dugout and Mike’s heart is a stone fist in the bottom of his stomach. In the eighth Anthony Rizzo gets a piece of her slider but Hills makes a beautiful, diving catch in center field and comes up with the ball, two outs. Mike takes a deep breath and walks out to the mound.

“You good?” he asks, and Ginny nods. Mike rolls the ball against his palm for a moment, willing it to cooperate with history. When he hands it back Ginny smiles at him, like she never, ever does when she's pitching, small and secretive and warm. Mike turns around three times on the way back to home plate wondering if he broke her concentration. 

He didn't. By the ninth, she's still hitless.

She asks for another piece of gum as they’re walking out onto the pitch. If Mike has ever felt more tense in his life he doesn't remember it, squatting behind home plate watching her throw balls to walk Anthony Rizzo, then two screwballs and a change-up to strike out Russell, then three quick sliders to strike out Bryant. Then Heyward’s at bat and Mike’s knees are screaming at him, and his entire heart is in his mouth, but Ginny looks cool and focused as ever, slim and steady on the mound, and Mike has to trust her. He calls for a fastball.

Heyward pops it up right back at Ginny, who calmly holds up her glove for the catch.

Mike freezes as the crowd erupts into delighted, shrieking chaos, the staggering hugeness of this moment barreling up at him all at once. He has absolutely no idea what to do. He should probably hang back as the rest of the guys all rush her, should let her have this moment without him turning it into some dopey media circus, but even as he’s thinking it Ginny’s off the mound and running toward _him_ , and just like that all fucking bets are off. Let them put him on the cover of every newspaper from here to Siberia, Mike thinks as he drops his mask and takes off in her direction. Let them say whatever they want on TV. It’s Ginny. It’s _Ginny_. He doesn’t care.

There’s still a couple of feet of field in the way when she launches herself at him—the force of her knocking him back a little, her strong legs locking around his waist. “Say it again,” she tells him, voice muffled against his shoulder. Mike’s heart stops deep inside his chest.

“Baker—” he starts, but she’s pulling back now to look at him, her expression calm and steady and sure.

“Mike,” she says. “If you meant it, say it again.”

Mike meant it. “I love you,” he tells her, voice barely carrying over the roar of the crowd in the stadium. “Jesus _Christ_ , Ginny, I love you so much.”

Ginny smiles like the sun coming up outside the Petco in the morning. Then she ducks her head and whispers in his ear.


End file.
